Vacancy Of Indigenous Features In South:a Different Drummer From The Perspective Of Psychological Realism

William Melville Kelley, a prominent African American writer, puts his heart into the development of a unique literature for African Americans based on African traditions. He has published four novels, A Different Drummer (1962), A Drop of Patience (1965), dem (1967) and Dunfords Travels Everywheres (1970). He is best known for A Different Drummer which is about the departure of an African American named Tucker Caliban from Sutton, an American Southern town, to an unknown destination in North. An unexpected mass exodus of the town’s African Americans followed his suit, which shocked and frightened the whites in Sutton. Sutton was a town where African Americans and whites lived together before. Actually, African American culture has always been an indispensable part in the culture of American South. This thesis researches the vacancy of indigenous features in American South caused by mass exodus of the African Americans from Sutton to the North from the perspective of psychological realism.Previous researches at home generally maintain that different narrative arts and points of view of several characters out of chronological sequence leave more space for readers to interpret this novel. Previous researches abroad concentrate on the impossibility of constructing a harmonious society where African Americans and whites live together. They also touch on the disintegration of African Americans and whites and make analyses of the new image of African Americans and the influences of African Americans’ exodus on the life of the whites. Researches of A Different Drummer at home and abroad from the perspective of psychological realism are still unknown. However, studies of other novels in terms of psychological realism are of referential values to this study. Their analysis of the writing techniques of psychological realism has provided some clues and ways for an in-depth understanding and interpretation of A Different Drummer. Based on the previous findings, this thesis researches the vacancy of indigenous features in American South as depicted in the novel from the perspective of psychological realism. African Americans, as cheap labors who have made much contribution to the farming culture, left the town. Besides, they brought away their Africa-based tradition which has been an indispensable part of Southern American culture since the founding of the country.Psychological realism, in a general and modern sense, is a kind of ideological trend of literature. It combines the truthful description of the real life, the psychological detection, character description, and environment realities with some symbolic techniques to reflect the social reality, particularly the presentation of the inner thoughts of characters. Kelley’s writing techniques of psychological realism, embodied as multiple narrations, shifting narrators and flashback, help to highlight the theme of the novel. The eleven chapters of the novel tell the story of the mass exodus of African Americans from South to North via different narrators. Each of the chapter is narrated by a different narrator, and such a technique helps to shed light on the social reality in which the narration is set.This thesis argues that the mass exodus of African Americans from Sutton to North leads to the vacancy of indigenous features in American South. Mister Leland’s dream of African Americans’ return to Sutton implies that African Americans are of great importance to American South socially, economically and culturally. The thesis investigates the influences of the African Americans’ exodus on the reconstruction and attaches great importance to the role of African Americans in the completeness of indigenous features in American South. It concludes that the return of African Americans would be of realistic significance to the reconstruction of American South, and that the harmonious integration of blacks and whites is the best way to construct a sound multicultural society in the United States.